CoSIDA Men's At-Large Academic All-America Teams
A pair of Centennial Conference standouts have been named to the CoSIDA Men's At-Large Academic All-America Team - Johns Hopkins' Vishnu Joshi (men's tennis) and Gettysburg's Oliver Pickering (men's swimming). Joshi was named to the first team and it is the third Academic All-America award of his career. Pickering was a second team pick, his first nod on the team.
The at-large team includes sports such as swimming, lacrosse, wrestling, tennis, fencing, skiing, and water polo.
The most decorated player in JHU program history, Joshi is just the fourth student-athlete in Johns Hopkins history to earn Academic All-America honors three times. Joshi is a four-time ITA All-American in singles and is a four-time selection to the NCAA Singles Championship. This past May, he became the first player in program history to play in the NCAA championship match.
Joshi went 16-3 in singles and 12-5 in doubles in his final season and finished his career ranked sixth in singles wins (60), 14th in doubles wins (53) and ninth in total wins (113). He led Hopkins to a 69-12 record, four Centennial Conference Championships and four NCAA Tournaments, including the 2021 semifinals, in his career.
Joshi earned bachelor's degrees in computer science and computer engineering in May 2021 and earned his master's degree in computer science last month. He was named a Third Team Academic All-American in 2020 and garnered First Team accolades in each of the last two years.
Last fall, Joshi he was a software development intern at Tesla and previously interned at Amazon, Capital One, NTT Data Services and DecisivEdge LLC. He also worked as a reinforcement learning investigator for LEAPS Lab at Johns Hopkins and was a backend developer for Knolist, a JHU Engineering Design Day startup.
A biochemistry and molecular biology major, Pickering is the 31st Gettysburg student-athlete to earn Academic All-America honors and first men's swimmer. Last month, he also became the first Bullet to earn Centennial Conference (CC) Scholar-Athlete of the Year.
Academically, Pickering was among Gettysburg's elite and received a number of awards during the recent Commencement for the Class of 2022. In addition to receiving departmental honors in his major, he was named Phi Beta Kappa and graduated summa cum laude. He received the Charles W. Beachem Athletic Award and the Margaret E. Fisher Memorial Award. The Beachem Award goes to a male senior on the basis of character, scholarship, and athletic achievement, while the Fisher Award is awarded to a male student who excels in one or more varsity sports and who achieves the highest academic average among winners of varsity letters.
Pickering's scholarly exploits as a Gettysburg student included publishing work in evolutionary biology after working with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama as part of a research lab managed by biology Prof. Alex Trillo in 2019. Following his time as a research lab assistant alongside chemistry Prof. Katherine Buettner, he presented his thesis work in bioinorganic chemistry at the American Chemical Society during the 2022 Symposium in San Diego. Pickering was also nominated as the 2022 General Chemistry Peer Learning Assistant of the Year. He was a PLA in biology, chemistry and genetics and was named the 2021 Teaching Assistant of the Year in organic chemistry in 2021.
Pickering ended his pool career on a high note by earning a silver medal in the 200-yard butterfly for the second time in his career at the 2022 CC Championship. He also made the conference finals in the 200 IM and 400 IM and helped the 800 freestyle relay grab bronze with a third-place showing. He was named All-CC Honorable Mention for the second time in his career thanks to his runner-up performance in the 200 fly.
A team co-captain this season, Pickering's versatility in the water landed him in the program's top 10 in six different events, including records in both the 200 fly (1:51.86) and 400 IM (4:05.05). He also ranks among the program's all-time leaders in the 1,000 free (7th, 10:02.49), 1,650 free (9th, 16:36.69), 200 IM (4th, 1:53.61), and 100 fly (6th, 51.08).
Out of the pool and classroom, Pickering was involved in a number of extracurricular activities on campus and in the local community. He was a radio show host on the college radio station, treasurer for the Skeptical Chemist club, a volunteer swim instructor for casa de la cultura, and a volunteer EMT with Adams County EMS.
Pickering intends to work as a clinical research coordinator before applying to medical school.